“Former general,” Chief barked.

It took immense effort for Griffin to hide his immediate reaction.

“Gentlemen,” said the premier, removing his hands from the crooks of his elbows and holding them up in stern warning, “we’ll begin discussions on the issues at hand when the Daughter of Earth arrives. Not before.”

“Good.” Bane’s voice rumbled and crackled like an inferno taking over a building. “’Cause there’s something I want to say to him.” He pushed out from behind the chief and started for Griffin.

Flashbacks to Makaha. Flashbacks to Keko’s too-late statement about not using magic in an attack.

Griffin planted his feet. Ready, if it was called for, to do it all over again.

“General,” the chief growled.

“Peace, Chimeran,” boomed the premier.

Bane kept coming.

Griffin stood his ground, dying to scream: What’s happened to her? Fucking tell me already!

Bane pulled up three feet away, his bare chest heaving, but not filled with Chimeran breath like Makaha. He nudged his chin into the deep shadows wedged between the trees. “I want to talk to you. Privately.”

David, Griffin’s head of security, jumped all over that. “Not outside the protection of the gathering.”

Griffin held up a hand but didn’t unlock his stare from the Chimeran general.

The chief appeared beside Bane, and Griffin could not read his face. It seemed to shift from worry to hate, desperation to fear. Griffin understood none of it.

“Gentlemen.” A sharp reprimand from the premier.

“No harm intended,” said Bane to Griffin. “Just words. It isn’t Senatus business.”

The premier crossed his arms. “Up to you, Ofarian.”

Without hesitation Griffin turned to David and Gwen. “I’m going. Alone.”

“But—” Gwen began.

“It’s not a discussion. Make sure we’re not disturbed or overheard.”

After sharing a long look, his two oldest and dearest friends fell back. When it came down to it, they had no choice in the matter. Maybe on another night he might regret ordering them to do something they so clearly didn’t like, but not on this one.

Bane headed off into the forest, the chief following, Griffin picking up the rear. He didn’t let himself think about how he was being drawn away from formal protection, didn’t let any sort of fear trickle in. His goal and a thousand questions propelled him to trail after the two wide, Chimeran backs stomping barefoot through the frigid forest. When they’d gone deep enough into the trees that the bonfire light didn’t reach and only the moonlight rained down, Bane stopped short and whirled on Griffin. Got right up into his face.

“She’ll die,” the general snarled. “All because of you.”

An invisible monster drove its great taloned fist right into Griffin’s stomach. “What’s happened?” He could barely get the words out.

“What’s happened?” Bane slapped his own chest, the sound violent and thick. “What’s happened? You’ve destroyed her is what happened.”

Griffin ignored the tingle of water magic, that sword of ice, begging to be released. “I did no such thing.”

Bane lunged. The chief was suddenly between them, pressing hands to Bane’s chest, pushing him backward. “General.” There was surprise in the chief’s voice. Also censure. Surprise that Bane could or would be so emotional about the sister who’d bested him in the past, and censure because the crazy rules of Chimeran society didn’t allow him to show such concern.

The chief turned around to face Griffin, and looked at him for a long, long time.

“Tell me,” Griffin demanded. “Great stars, just tell me. She called me and I”—he struggled mightily with how much to say, how much to reveal—“I don’t know what to think.”

The chief’s eyes widened. “She called you? When?”

“Yesterday afternoon. She didn’t say anything, only good-bye. Where the hell is she?”

“It should come from you, Chief,” Bane said.

By the strain on Chief’s face, Griffin knew that the head Chimeran did not want to tell him. That this little separate powwow had been Bane’s idea, and that if the chief did not talk, Bane certainly would.

With a long, slow sigh, Chief reached up and removed a thin, plain rope from around his neck. On it was strung a black rock no larger than a quarter, lumpy and nondescript. Griffin had noticed it before—it was the only thing he’d ever seen the chief wear on his torso—but he’d never given it much thought.

Now the chief held it out to Griffin.

He didn’t take it, didn’t even touch it. “What is it?”

Chief remained as even keeled as Bane had been dramatic. “It’s the symbol of the new Chimeran lands, of the islands that would eventually become Hawaii,” he said. “When our Queen first set foot on the Big Island, she picked up this very rock, held it up, and declared that she’d finally found our new home. That was fifteen hundred years ago.”

Behind the chief, Bane folded his big arms.

“And?” Griffin prompted.

The chief regarded the rock with a dazed sort of wonder as it swung on its rope. “The Queen brought our people across the ocean from Polynesia in search of one thing: the Fire Source. The food our powers need to breathe and exist in this world. It is pure, raw fire magic. She felt it call to her from the other side of the water, and bade her people to follow her to find it. This stone is the symbol of her quest. Of her love for her people. Of her leadership and bravery and selflessness. She is a goddess, in our eyes.”

So much to learn. And the Ofarians had once thought they’d known everything . . .

“What does this have to do with Keko?”

Bane came to the chief’s side and they exchanged a serious look. Chief looped the rope back over his neck. “Keko is trying to succeed where our great Queen failed.”

Dread nearly took Griffin off his feet. “What do you mean, ‘failed’?”

“The Queen knew the Source was somewhere on the Hawaiian Islands. She could sense the raw magic but didn’t know where it was, how to get to it. All she knew was that if she could find it and tap into it, she and her people would know more power than they ever dreamed.” The chief glanced away. “She spent her whole life searching. When she finally found it as an old woman, it destroyed her.”

Griffin swallowed several times to try to get moisture into his mouth. “And you . . . you think Keko is going after the Source.”

“We don’t think. We know.”

“How?”

“She left a note in my house. Yesterday morning before sunrise. Bane was with me when we found it. And Keko was gone.”

Griffin started to pace, soggy leaves parting beneath his boots. “Why?” he asked, but as soon as the word escaped his lips, he knew the answer. It made him nauseous.

“If she finds the Source and brings back the raw magic,” Bane said, “she will be greater than our Queen. Higher than ali’i, higher than any Chimeran in any of the island clans is allowed to dream. It will erase all her shame and make her into something new. She’ll be untouchable.”

“But you said the Source killed the Queen.”

Chief licked his lips. “That’s the belief, yes. Legend says that she did find it, that the power was hers for one brief moment before it destroyed her. It’s why no Chimeran has gone searching for it ever again. Because we don’t believe it was meant to be found. That we may borrow its magic from afar, but death will come to anyone who touches it.”

Great stars, no.

“Why didn’t she tell anyone else?” Griffin asked, a thought coming to him. “If all she wanted was glory and the chance to save face, why didn’t she announce what she was going to do to the entire Chimeran valley? Wouldn’t this kind of thing give her major status?”

The chief looked down, suddenly and strangely silent.

Bane jumped in. “She is desperate and depressed, Griffin, a lethal combination. Claiming to go after the Source would only bring her more scorn. We believe in proof, nothing less. Valor and strength that can be seen and tested. She’s on a suicide mission with no promise of glory at the end. Only a chance, and a very small one at that.”